The Doctor Dreams
by themagpie17
Summary: When the Doctor learns to sleep again, he starts dreaming of an old friend from far away. But why?


When he first dreams of her, she is walking through an open field, flowers circling around her forehead, humming and smiling. She is alone, and the wind blows gently through her blonde hair.

He wakes up sweating and gasping for air.

Sleep is something he learned from River. Certainly he'd dozed from time to time, and slept full on, post-regeneration - but Time Lords don't sleep the way humans do, like clockwork. Time travel is hell on one's circadian rhythm, and eventually the need to sleep just faded away to an occasional maintenance nap. Time Lord brain circuitry is different anyway - not quite the same neurotransmitters, not quite the same neural structure requiring the same dormant period to rebuild itself. When he picked the habit back up from his nights with River, dreaming hadn't been part of the package. He had always recalled having dreams before he started wandering about in the TARDIS, but they hadn't returned. Not until tonight, anyway.

He doesn't tell River, even though she is lying beside him. She is deeply asleep, breathing slow and even, still in the dress she wore that evening. He sighs and lays back, staring at the ceiling until she stirs awake.

When he dreams of her again, the TARDIS is drifting freely as he naps during a dull afternoon with Amy and Rory. Neither of them feel much like going anywhere - how human - and so he tries to entertain himself with a paddle and ball that he finds laying in one of the spare rooms while they do boring things alone together. After a few hundred bounces he loses interest, and decides that time will pass more quickly if he is unconscious - though unfortunately, it will still be in the right order. He settles in a conveniently spinny chair and reclines comfortably, his feet on the console.

Suddenly, he is walking in a quiet forest. She is beside him, they are holding hands. That they are touching surprises him the most. She feels so far away from him, even as their fingers lace together; he can barely feel her touch. She reaches into her hair, and hands him a flower. She doesn't say anything.

Again, he wakes in a panic, this time crying out sharply as he nearly tips onto the floor.

"Why do the dreams mean anything, Doctor?" Rory stares at him as he spins uneasily in his chair. "People have dreams all the time. It's just... brain stuff happening, trying to get back to normal after a long day."

"That's the thing - _people_ have dreams all the time, and as I am constantly reminding you all - I am not particularly people. I'm not even remotely people. So why, then, would I suddenly start having dreams after several hundred years without them? I'm not sleeping for necessity's sake anyway." Rory just looks at him blankly.

"Maybe you're picking up on some of our dreams?" Amy suggests.

"No. Because none of you know anything about what's happening in them in the least."

The two companions stand quietly then, watching the Doctor turn and turn in circles. They are waiting for him to come up with an idea, anything, but he just twists in silence, wanting his unspoken answers to be wrong.

The third time he dreams of her he is with River again. She is curled with her head on his chest, already asleep, being much more used to it for the time she spent on Earth. He leans his face into her ample hair and closes his eyes. Quickly he is on a cold, damp beach at dawn.

She is looking up at him, exhaustion on her face. She is tired. The flowers are gone from her hair. Her eyes are sparkling, and a faint half-smile is tracing her lips.

"Doctor..." she trails off, holding out both hands. He takes them. "You look so different now." He smiles softly. She is beautiful, even dressed in a simple blue jacket and jeans. She looks mostly the same - a little older, a little more worn.

"I've changed again," is all he can manage. This shouldn't be happening. This can't be happening. He is rocking back on his heels and blushing.

"So... so have I, I think," she mumbles, looking at the ground. "It wasn't expected, it just sort of... sort of happened." His stomach twists around inside of him.

"How could you change? You're human. Humans don't change, you just sort of go on being you." _Until you stop. _But he doesn't say that, because she can't just stop; she wouldn't. What scares him the most is that he is answering her earnestly, of his own will; he is asleep, he knows, but the conversation is honest and real.

"It's the same way anyone changes, I guess. One day you're human, you're with your family, friends, at your job... the next, you're not anymore." She is kicking the sand. He recognizes this beach now. "I was having a baby, you know... yours, well, sort of." He nods at her, holding tightly to her hands. That could never have been him, but it still stings to know that somewhere, a part of him was living quietly with her, making her happy in ways he never could.

"How is he... am I... doing?" She laughs, and the sound ringslike a hundred glass bells shattering against his hearts.

"He's a right trip, he is. He is everything you were: adventurous, charming, a little bit cocky... gets him in trouble now and then. He's working a bit with the government over there, if you can believe it... helping them where he can. When he's not being threatened with arrest for getting too mouthy with the officials, we make do. We made do, I suppose." She swallows hard, her voice cracking against the strangeness of the past tense.

"I don't understand any of this, Doctor. Things weren't right with the baby and then suddenly I was here, I was wandering with you again, except it's like shadows of the places we've been. Little flashes of you and me, like I'm dreaming..." She is crying, sentences running on and words breaking in her mouth. She stops as the Doctor presses his hand against her face. Her tears drip softly onto his fingertips, burning with how much it hurts to touch her again.

"Rose, my Rose..." His own voice is shaking now too. "I burned up something beautiful just to say goodbye to you, and now you've returned the favor in kind." Somehow she had fled to him, to be with him, just one last time; she threw herself back into his universe as a ghost in his head for her final farewell.

"What happens now?" She looks up at him, her eyes bright with fear.

"I can't even begin to explain how you're here, let alone where you're going," he offers. She hugs him, wrapping her arms around him as though he could anchor her to reality. "I've never understood human metaphysics very well... there's theories about heaven being a parallel world, which might be nice-" she stops him with two fingers against his lips.

"Not to me, I mean to you - the other you - to Mum and Dad and Tony and the baby?" He feels a pang as he remembers her family, the humanity he had left with his old self, what she was leaving behind.

"They'll carry on, Rose. That's what you humans always do."

"Listen to you - all alien again." She laughs bitterly, sniffling. "Oh, Doctor... I know I've said it before, but since this might be the last time - since I can't say it to you, the other you - Doctor, I-"

He is awake, panting, chest tightened in panic. River is peering at him and shaking him gently, propped up on one arm, clearly concerned.

"Are you alright? You were talking. You've never done that before." He wipes his face, covered in tears. She strokes his arm, studying him as he tries to collect an answer.

"I'm always alright."

3


End file.
